Archive for May, 2015

We don’t often repeat the cliche that if someone has nothing to hide then they shouldn’t worry but we should. Going to the heart of what our society values and fears we seem to have become indifferent to the freedoms taken away from so many in the name of safety, the monitoring and tracking that the government conducts and the information we volunteer for convenience and access which the corporations sell among themselves are so accepted now that it has degraded our sense of liberty. We are bound to the habit of telling others what prudence dictates should be secrets. How many people use common sense when asking questions or when answering? Why do we need to know? Why do we suspect those who aren’t like us? We should all have something to hide because we should all be different, even if only by a small degree.

In the past few years there has been much talk of a national conversation about racism, but why not have one about everything that plagues society? Would you agree that Dogma is the result of other peoples thinking? Isn’t it unfair to copy others, especially when they are wrong? Would you agree with me that much is connected and that many issues are only one? Let us not be so concerned with the wide world and resolve to take care of our world, that which we influence and let the rest take care of itself.

It was 1999, and Robert Downey, Jr., an Oscar-nominated actor, teetered on the edge of a chasm. If Superior Court Judge Lawrence Mira — who had seen Downey stand before him on several occasions — had taken mercy on him, he might be dead now; it’s a fact that the actor recognizes. But Mira had no mercy left to grant. Downey had used up the judge’s goodwill with a series of bad choices, and the judge no longer saw the benefit of court-mandated rehabs and facilities.